PIDB conducts survey at Feroze Gandhi market

LUDHIANA: Contrary to its earlier proposal of constructing a multi-storey parking at the Feroze Gandhi market locality to bring respite from parking congestion in the area, known as the city's business hub, a team of the municipal corporation and Punjab Infrastructure Development Board (PIDB) has conducted a survey to construct an underground parking lot to avoid chaos.
According to information, a joint team of the Feedback Ventures, a consultancy firm of PIDB along with a team of the civic body comprising officers of the building and road (B&R) branch, superintendent engineer (SE) Dharam Singh and executive engineer (XEN) HS Khosa conducted a joint inspection of the market to check the feasibility of construction of the underground parking in the area.
Besides, soil testing, the team also conducted a thorough study of the total number of vehicles coming to the market daily, to assess the possibility of constructing an underground parking in the area. Earlier, the proposal of setting up of a multi-storey mechanized parking in the locality was on cards and agencies had also conducted the soil testing and other necessary tests for it.
However, it was later realized that the multi-storey parking would make the existing space in the market more congested due to which the proposal of the underground parking was mooted up.
Even the idea that the multi-storey parking could also encourage illegal parking outside shops in the market also resulted in mulling the idea of the underground parking which could prove very beneficial.
Sources said failure of the already existing multi-storey parking was giving nightmares to the civic body authorities due to which they did not want to waste the prime land of Ludhiana Improvement Trust (LIT) by constructing big structure at the place.
Sources said the MC and PIDB was mulling the idea of constructing three-storeys of underground parking on the same pattern as had earlier been constructed at Jalandhar city.